


Arrivals.

by outpastthemoat



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Jedi Apprentice Series - Jude Watson & Dave Wolverton, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Asexual Obi-Wan Kenobi, Demisexual Obi-Wan Kenobi, Demisexuality, Gratuitous use of Rumi poetry, Introspection, M/M, Poetry, Prompt Fill, Unrequited love (that is actually requited), preslash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:00:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24292480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outpastthemoat/pseuds/outpastthemoat
Summary: It’s strange what he remembers about his master now that his apprenticeship is over.  Not merely his master’s teachings on the Force or his lessons in diplomacy and Ataru.  It is his small habits and quirks that Obi-Wan finds himself recalling, little things about Qui-Gon that he had not much noticed before.  How his nails were always ragged at the tips; his master bit them off where they grew too long.  How he whistled off-tune in the mornings.  And how he liked to wake up slowly, turning his face to the rising sun of whatever planet where they found themselves.As a padawan, Obi-Wan had always been in such a hurry to tug on his boots and begin the day’s work.  But Qui-Gon, when he could afford it, had preferred a gradual transition.You are always such a rush, padawan, to throw yourself into the day, his master would say with amusement, eyes crinkling at the corners.  Best to lie still and let your dreams fall away from your waking mind gradually.  Let yourself find what meaning and insight your mind offers you, before presenting it with the challenges to come.
Relationships: Qui-Gon Jinn/Obi-Wan Kenobi
Comments: 25
Kudos: 83
Collections: Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan May the Fourth be With You Prompt Meme





	Arrivals.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [acatbyanyothername](https://archiveofourown.org/users/acatbyanyothername/gifts).



> Written for the May the Fourth Challenge 2020! Though I missed the deadline, as usual. 
> 
> This story was inspired by a prompt from acatbyanyothername:
> 
> "Obi Wan and Qui Gon exchange letters after Naboo and sometimes writes in the langage of his home planet, it's always some variations on a love declarations, and so Obi Wan resolves to learn the langage to understand what Qui Gon is trying to say to him [any rating but shippy]"
> 
> Great liberties were taken with this prompt, whoops. I hope you like it anyway!
> 
> All the poetry in this story is by Rumi as rearranged by Coleman Barks.

_The door is round and open._

_Don't go back to sleep._

* * *

He awakes with these words drifting through his head, that first morning after he arrives on Austero. 

Obi-Wan holds still in his bed, simply allowing the words to pass through his mind, allowing the dream to gradually fade away. He takes in the first hints of light blooming at the open window, considers the view of a few ancient cypress trees still caught in the shadow of night, the quietness of a room located in the remote corridors of the eastern wing of the palace where no one but an unimportant knight on a mission of little consequence might be offered. 

It had been Qui-Gon who had always impressed on him the value of a slow awakening, if one had the opportunity. _Wait for your soul to arrive, before you start the day._

He breathes out and in. The dream fades away.

It’s strange what he remembers about his master now that his apprenticeship is over. Not merely his master’s teachings on the Force or his lessons in diplomacy and Ataru. It is his small habits and quirks that Obi-Wan finds himself recalling, little things about Qui-Gon that he had not much noticed before. How his nails were always ragged at the tips; his master bit them off where they grew too long. How he whistled off-tune in the mornings. And how he liked to wake up slowly, turning his face to the rising sun of whatever planet where they found themselves.

As a padawan, Obi-Wan had always been in such a hurry to tug on his boots and begin the day’s work. But Qui-Gon, when he could afford it, had preferred a gradual transition. 

_You are always such a rush, padawan, to throw yourself into the day,_ his master would say with amusement, eyes crinkling at the corners. _Best to lie still and let your dreams fall away from your waking mind gradually. Let yourself find what meaning and insight your mind offers you, before presenting it with the challenges to come._

Obi-Wan gazes up at the patterns of ornamental stonework of the ceiling and lets his mind clear, trying to surrender the last fragments left of his dream, while the light climbs across his face until he must give in to the pressure of rising to start his day. Those two lines, familiar in some way. Perhaps they might have come from one of Qui-Gon’s poems. 

_You will arrive at an understanding in its own time,_ Qui-Gon would have counseled him, if he were here. 

_Perhaps, master,_ Obi-Wan answers in his head. But there is so little time, after all. He has learned that lesson in the years since Naboo. He had never been able to contemplate a future beyond his apprenticeship, and then that distant future had become the present. 

Twelve years of Qui-Gon, and there is so much he has not understood about his master. And now he keeps returning to his memories, these eyelash-thin moments, only brief flashes during their long history, seeking to understand what he had not back then.

He rises from his bed and dresses, straightening his tunics and tabards, tugging on his boots. He must begin his preparations for the talks of the centennial trade negotiations in the Auden sector.

He brands the lines from the poem deep in his memory, to take out again and examine later. 

* * *

His master had a silent love for a collection of poems from his homeworld, a heavy volume printed on vellum and bound in pale green cloth. 

Qui-Gon had spent years translating the poems from his native language, at times working on a single poem for months, rising at odd hours of the night to write down stanzas on scraps of flimsi or the edges of discarded papers. As a padawan, Obi-Wan would find the scraps of flimsi and paper tucked into his master’s pockets or stuffed inside the pouches on his master’s belt, and he would collect the fragments, smoothing out each paper and placing them in a neat pile in Qui-Gon’s rooms. 

At times Qui-Gon would read his translations out loud to Obi-Wan. “Listen to this, padawan,” his master had said, that first night he had taken down the volume of poems to show his young apprentice. 

_“Here is where you live. Come inside._

_Touch what is not, and then this is._

_Raise dust in both worlds_

_Then the going goes the same.”_

Qui-Gon had looked up from the page and caught a glimpse of his padawan’s face. “You do not care for poetry, I take it.”

“I don’t mind it,” Obi-Wan had said, wanting to be truthful but diplomatic. “I just don’t think I have the right personality for such things. It’s not something I understand.”

“Anyone can come to understand poetry. Perhaps not Hajis, I should not have begun with him. Now, Bel-Indira— you might get on with her. Let’s find out.

_“You are from a country beyond this universe_

_Yet your best guess is_

_You are made of earth and ashes.”_

He had glanced across the page at his padawan expectantly. “Now, what do you make of that, Obi-Wan?”

“I still don’t understand, master,” Obi-Wan replied, who had not been a padawan for very long, but was already prepared to be patient with his master’s esoteric interests. 

“Ah, well,” Qui-Gon had remarked with composure, shutting up the book with a rueful air, “You’re young still. I suppose you will arrive at an understanding in time.”

Qui-Gon had found great meaning in these poems. Obi-Wan had despaired of ever being able to understand the deeper implications. He is too practical, too linear, too reliant on the straightforward progression of logical conclusions. He does not have the depth, the insight that Qui-Gon possesses for such things. Perhaps that was what drew him to Qui-Gon, in the end. Here was a man who loved mysteries, who saw certain things, beyond just how they were but as what they could be, layers of meaning existing all at the same time. Qui-Gon had made studying these mysteries hide life’s work. Obi-Wan’s great challenge was attempting to understand his master.

There had been a time when the pale green book had been as a familiar a sight as Qui-Gon himself, the tips of his hair brushing the pages, frowning in thought. Qui-Gon had been in the habit of murmuring those lines out loud, waking his padawan out of deep slumber by grasping his shoulder and murmuring, “Listen to this, Obi-Wan - what do you think?”

“ _You are gone from sight,_

_not from inside my love._

_You are always there._

_I travel about the world,_

_hoping at the end that you will show me_

_my wandering way home.”_

“You should have been a mystic of old,” Obi-Wan had teased him. “Holed up in your hermitage with your poems, only bread and water and the living Force to sustain you.”

“Well, perhaps, padawan—” Qui-Gon had smiled, almost self-consciously. “I suppose I might have been. But I imagine I would have been quite bereft without you.”

Qui-Gon had not yet finished translating all the poems in the collection by the end of Obi-Wan’s apprenticeship. But just before his knighting on Naboo, Qui-Gon had offered him the volume of poems as a parting gift.

“Force knows these poems have been a trial to you through your apprenticeship,” Qui-Gon said, and Obi-Wan had smiled. “These poems have brought me much insight,” his master had continued, and held out the book. “As you have, my padawan. They are the result of your efforts, as much as mine.”

“Are you sure?” Obi-Wan had asked, his hand hesitating over the collection. He understood the value of such a gift. His efforts on these poems had taken his master over a decade, a lifetime of work. 

Obi-Wan has never tried to hide from himself that he would accept anything Qui-Gon was prepared to offer him. But this had been too much. A gift he had not deserved, and which he could not hope to ever return.

“It’s yours, padawan, should you want it,” his master said. There was a certain look in his eye for which Obi-Wan had no translation.

He had thought he could come to understand what that look might convey, if he should want to—but he was not ready to learn Qui-Gon’s meaning just yet.

Their hands had brushed as Obi-Wan accepted the book.

* * *

Austero is a quiet world with little galactic industry, its surface mostly covered with oceans of green-gray seawater. The palace resides close to one such sea, with black-sand beaches; the salt from the air blowing inside the palace and coating the ornamental stonework, leaving a film on his skin and coating his hair. The palace workers boil the saltwater to use for cooking, he has heard, leaving behind salt so soft and fine that it slips through one’s fingers like shimmersilk. 

Obi-Wan is slow to greet the officials from the Auden sector this morning. He is still caught up in the last moments of the dream, and his memories of Qui-Gon’s voice, reminding him of the lessons he had taught him over the years. He does not have the luxury of much time for personal reflection during the negotiations, but in his idle moments he finds himself trying to reconstruct the poem from the few lines he has recalled.

_The door is round and open._

_Don't go back to sleep._

_The here and now, padawan,_ the memory of his master's voice reminds him, as it so often does these days.

Perhaps this is why his thoughts continue to turn to Qui-Gon. Obi-Wan finds himself remembering things he thought he had forgotten about his master. The way he might walk with his chin lifted. For such a tall man, he had seemed even taller, forever looking as he did up at the sky as he walked. The almost dreamy look on his face while he wrote out his poems, his eyes lighting up when he had puzzled out a hidden meaning lost under the surface of the poem at hand.

Obi-Wan shakes his head and turns his attention back to the Auden sector. 

Austero is a place conducive to dreaming. The white stone of the palace burning hot to the touch, wind whipping through the open windows. Obi-Wan drifts, unattentive, the quiet voices of the ministers blurring into the background. 

Then midmorning, the suns climbing overhead, comes another fragment of memory: His master walking barefoot across a beach on a distant world, stooping to pick up fragments of seaglass and pebbles, the hem of his robe damp with seawater, holding one long sleeve up with one hand while he combed through the sand with his other. 

“A gift for you, padawan,” his master had said, straightening up and offering his padawan a fragment of broken coral. That rare look on his face, expectant and thoughtful, waiting for Obi-Wan’s reaction. 

Nantalis. Obi-Wan has not thought of that mission in years.

This is how he spends his free moments: Combing through his memories of Qui-Gon. Foolish, perhaps. But Qui-Gon had been his anchor for so long, and without him, Obi-Wan is adrift. Now he clings to the flotsam of the peculiarities of his memories, waiting to see what is brought back to the shore with each tide, and what dissolves like foam, inconsequential. 

What is significant, and what is not? 

And now the voice in his head, speaking close to his ear, saying, _Don’t go back to sleep._

* * *

As a padawan, he had thought there was nothing more important than learning the lessons Qui-Gon had set out for him. Qui-Gon had often taught by way of riddles and enigmas, leaving Obi-Wan a clue and expecting him to navigate the meaning himself, joining Qui-Gon at the destination. There were no freely given answers with his master. Obi-Wan was expected to put in his own work. 

Qui-Gon has not given up in teaching him, though he is knighted. And now, even though Obi-Wan has left his tutelage, he continues to add to his former padawan’s reading in his infrequent, brief messages, attaching a treatise on a Chalactan adept’s philosophy once, a poem here and there. 

There had been the message, not long after their parting on Naboo, that had consisted of a few lines from one of Qui-Gon’s translations:

_You are beyond the winding way._

_Old as what has no starting out, yet freshly begun._

Obi-Wan has not known how to reply to these messages. He still has no gift for poetry, despite all Qui-Gon’s lessons. Instead he asks questions Qui-Gon questions in return: _How are you? How is Anakin? Have you begun to teach him Ataru yet? How are you getting along without me?_

He wonders what Anakin has made of Qui-Gon’s poems. If Qui-Gon should recite them out loud from memory to his new padawan. 

Obi-Wan does not speak the original language of the poems; he does not even know from which world the poems had originated. He had never thought to ask Qui-Gon. 

It seems like there is so much more of these things that keep cropping up these days, how much he had not thought to ask Qui-Gon during their time together. In the later days of his apprenticeship, he had been so focused on learning his trade, his duties and how to perform them, that perhaps he had forgotten that Qui-Gon himself was who he had originally set out to study. Obi-Wan remembers now, being a young boy, eager to find out every detail of his master. He had forgotten that, by the end of their time together.

Even now, Qui-Gon’s voice is often echoing through his mind, wandering through and pausing for a moment to remark on Obi-Wan’s decisions. Perhaps that is why Obi-Wan continues to address his thoughts to his master, though he has not spoken to Qui-Gon since that moment in the rain gardens of Naboo. There are some habits it is impossible to break yourself of. Addressing Qui-Gon, for him, is one. 

_You still have much to learn, my padawan_ , his master’s voice will say.

_I had assumed,_ Obi-Wan will reply dryly to the master in his head, _that my education would have concluded when my braid was cut._

He can almost hear Qui-Gon’s chuckle. _An education is never complete, padawan. It is only once you have reached the end of what you know when you will find that true learning begins._

* * *

There had been the song Qui-Gon had often sung, humming it under his breath as he went about his business. Obi-Wan remembers it, even now, more for the sound of Qui-Gon’s voice than for any significance of the lyrics. 

Qui-Gon could not be said to be able to hold a tune, but he often sang other songs with fervent appreciation. But for this single song he had used a low voice, almost a whisper, as if he had been embarrassed to be caught singing it. The song was from Qui-Gon’s homeworld, the words only a close approximation of the original meaning, or so his master had said; a song that meant home, or was about home, or was a longing for a home you have never had. 

He had heard it first as Qui-Gon’s young padawan. The frigid coldness of an unheated single room cabin on a world caught in its midwinter storms; Obi-Wan had not quite slept all through the night, shivering despite the thick layer of blankets. 

Obi-Wan had heard his master stir, the creak of the wooden slats of the bed as he swung his legs over the side, the floorboards dipping under his feet. A heavy weight dropped abruptly over him, and his shivering slowly ceased: Qui-Gon’s blankets, still warm with the heat of his body. 

He had not opened his eyes. He had been dimly relieved that it was his master and not himself who was up in the frigid winter morning; it was much too cold to be awake. Then the sounds of his master’s ankle popping as he had crouched, and the snap-crackle of the heater as Qui-Gon turned up the dial. 

Then an unfamiliar sound. Qui-Gon humming deep in his throat, a quiet, rusty noise. His master kept the tuneless song going as he set out their cistern of water by the heater to melt, as he had brewed a pot of tea. Over the clinking of the cups and plates set out, a meal of meat and broth heated over the heating coil. 

The humming stopped when Obi-Wan had stuck his head out of the blankets.

“Ah, there you are.” His master’s voice was amused. “I had almost given up hope that you might make an appearance today. I have been waiting for the pleasure of your company.”

Obi-Wan had not been with his master for long, then. Later he would learn that Qui-Gon often went about whistling this tune when he was pleased. _A lullaby from my homeworld_ , he had told his padawan later, chuckling in that way Obi-Wan had learned meant he was having a bit of a laugh at his own expense, shaking his head over his foolishness. 

He had been startled to realize that Qui-Gon was sentimental about such things, songs and poems from the world where he had been born. 

Obi-Wan himself had looked up the record of his own history when he had become a knight, stoically reading the information on the datascreen. His parents, impoverished, with too many children, handing him over the Order in the hopes he would be provided for. So he had been not much wanted, not much cared for, even then. He accepted the information before he had even switched off the screen. 

Qui-Gon, in contrast, remembered his homeworld fondly, treasured his private memories of a mother and a sister, had visited his homeworld as a padawan and kept his slight trace of an accent even now. He keeps tokens from his homeworld in his quarters, paintings and ceramics. Sometimes, even now, Obi-Wan will take the river stone from his pocket and turn it over in his hands. Another of Qui-Gon’s inscrutable gifts, this, another totem from Qui-Gon’s homeworld. 

Obi-Wan had never asked where his homeworld was; he had believed it would have been an invasion of the privacy Qui-Gon had always valued. 

This, like so many other things, was something he had not understood about Qui-Gon until his apprenticeship was over: That Qui-Gon had not kept his secrets so very close to his chest. He had only ever been waiting for Obi-Wan to ask.

* * *

Austero has a luminous sunset, casting the palace walls with shades of pink and gold. The delegations conclude their remarks for the day, and Obi-Wan makes his leave, winding through the silent corridors to his room.

He finds himself falling back into the lines and rhythm of the verse from his dream, picking up his thoughts where he had left off. A memory surfaces, as he begins to remove his boots in the privacy of his quarters, as though all throughout the day, his mind has been patiently waiting for him to be alone and finally present in himself enough to attend: That last conversation they had had, at the rain gardens underneath the waterfalls of Theed. 

The great waterfalls had been a steady rush overhead, the cascades showering down droplets of water like rainfall on their hair and robes, giving the gardens its name. Qui-Gon, his chest still heavily wrapped and bulky underneath his raw silk tunics, lowering himself stiffly to recline under one of the caspic trees that grew beneath the falls, Obi-Wan kneeling in front of him. 

“You will be leaving soon,” Qui-Gon had said. 

Obi-Wan’s knighting ceremony had been rushed, quiet and full of too many people, the eyes of the Queen and her handmaidens and guards as well as the Councilors, leaving Obi-Wan on edge. Qui-Gon, eyes deep set with barely concealed pain, had not said much beyond the ritual words, and once Obi-Wan’s braid had been cut, he had not so much the sensation of a stage of life concluded, a book thoughtfully closed shut, than a lingering sensation of something half-finished, a skillset left unmastered.

‘’I may not see you for some time. Perhaps many years,” Qui-Gon had said. “I will be glad to see you again, when you are returned to me. I will await your arrival.” His master said the words formally, placing his broad hands on Obi-Wan’s shoulders. 

Simple words. A blessing, a benediction from his former master, to speed him on his way, he had assumed. Whey, then, had Obi-Wan felt as though he had missed something of great importance, that there was some other meaning floating under the surface?

And as they sat together with the falls thundering overhead, Qui-Gon had taken him by surprise, and bent his graying head to kiss him chastely on the brow. 

But then Qui-Gon had pulled back, and Obi-Wan had been called away by the voices of the councilors from beyond the garden.

* * *

Twilight descends slowly on Austero. There is light at windows long after the suns go down. Obi-Wan eats his meal and continues his work quietly in the privacy of his room, reading debriefings and looking at landscape maps until his head aches. 

Then he settles on the floor of his room. The stone is still warm, despite the cooling air. He closes his mind and sinks into a current of the Force, allowing it to tow him under. 

He floats near the surface of the Force for some time, random fragments of thought swirling around him like leaves and sticks caught in an eddy, _sign the documents, contact the Premier, boots need polishing._ He lets these thoughts float away, and makes himself a stone in the current, sinking deeper. 

Dark water here, dragging him down, but there is no danger beyond what he brings with him. He does not panic, he is well-versed in this aspect of the Force. Indeed, Qui-Gon had remarked on his affinity for these deeper channels of the Force. 

_There is so much of you always submerged,_ his master had once said. His gaze had been thoughtful. _You are always fathoms away, so often thinking of something else._

_I do not understand your meaning, master,_ Obi-Wan had replied, exasperated. _I’m right here, with you._

Nantalis. 

The name of the planet comes swimming up from the deep water back to Obi-Wan. It had been that mission, one of their last journeys together before the advent of Naboo, when Qui-Gon had walked the beaches every morning, and Obi-Wan had walked with him in silence, the wind gathering his master’s long graying hair and combing it up into the sky with its cool fingers. 

There had been a morning on Nantalis, when Qui-Gon had looked up at the sun gathering its strength on the horizon and he had murmured a line of poetry.

“I _t is the scent of home that keeps me going_

_The hope of union, the face of my beloved.”_

“What is the context?” Obi-Wan had asked.

“A woman, writing to her lover on the eve of his return.” There was something distant in the shape of his master’s eyes. 

“You’re a romantic,” Obi-Wan had said lightly, to tease him out his strange mood. 

“I suppose so,” Qui-Gon had replied. There had been a wistful note to his voice that had taken Obi-Wan by surprise. Then his master had smiled. “How could I not be a romantic? What matters more than love in any relationship, after all?”

“Many things, master—Comfort. Protection. Friendship.”

“Is that not what love encompasses, in many respects?”

“It is not like that,” argued Obi-Wan, “that’s not what I meant,” and he held still to try to grasp what exactly he did mean. The wind tore at his robes.

“Explain it to me then,” Qui-Gon offered.

“I don’t think I can.”

“Am I to take it that you are not a romantic, Obi-Wan?”

“I don’t think so,” Obi-Wan had answered. “I do love. I know that to be true. But I suppose I’m not the sort of person who falls in love. The kind of person that another person might love.” 

“You think so?”

He hesitated. “I’m not sure,” he had replied.

Qui-Gon had looked at him in a peculiar way, then, but had fallen silent, and Obi-Wan had still been struggling to say what he meant. 

“I hope you let me know when you come across your answer,” Qui-Gon said.

Afterwards, Obi-Wan had kept struggling to find the words to explain his meaning. Love is like taking a breath: One cannot live without it, but of equal importance is the release. Love is like fire or salt or water, something basic and primitive and fundamental. Bedrock, the base of a mountain. 

He knows he does love, and his own love is irrevocable, a part of him he can no more exercise from himself than he could remove his own lungs and expect to keep on breathing. Romance, he wants to argue with Qui-Gon, has nothing to do with it. 

Like this, he had kept trying to say. Like a river stone-weight in my pocket. Love like the tide, coming in and out, love like coming home at the end of the day to find that you are not alone. Love like a cup, brought to one's mouth each morning, a practical vessel made of clay. Love like hands, to work and create and soothe another’s pain.

After that, he had tried to write Qui-Gon a poem of his own, a foolish, awkward thing about desolate cliff sides and mountain surfaces, and waves lapping against rocks, crevices where small flowers grow in secret places, hidden from sight, scribed on the back of a piece of paper. He wanted to show Qui-Gon what he did mean, but he was not the kind of person to be able to explain his thoughts in that way.

Nothing Obi-Wan had written had been anything like what he had meant. He had crumpled up the paper and set it aside. 

* * *

Obi-Wan surfaces out of the memory, blinking into the approaching twilight of his unlit room.

_You ought to be sleeping_ , Qui-Gon’s voice seems to reproach him. 

“I suppose I require more peace and quiet, for that,” he answers. “If you don’t mind.”

His master’s chuckle, just as though he is here. 

“What am I missing, Qui-Gon?” he asks his master. 

The Qui-Gon in his head shakes his head at his obtuse padawan. _You’re not thinking_ , he seems to chide. 

“That’s not quite true,” Obi-Wan answers reflectively. He feels as though he has done nothing but think these past few years, constantly turning thoughts around in his head, looking for an answer to an unknown question. He is no closer now than he was on Naboo, on Nantalis, on any of the other places he had gone with Qui-Gon.

His master clicks his tongue in admonition. _You don’t wish to know, my padawan._

He has no answer for that.

* * *

The sea-wind on Austero picks up at night, shivering around the palace until the foundation trembles. Obi-Wan closes the window, latching it securely; still, the limbs from the trees batten at the panes, and he cannot sleep through the sound. 

After a while, he sits up in his bed and switches on the glow panel, and decides to take out the book. 

He has kept the volume of poetry Qui-Gon had given him with him since his knighting, carrying it in his pack from world to world, wrapping it carefully in waterproof material, not wanting to risk such a precious item being destroyed but reluctant to leave it behind at the Temple. After all, Qui-Gon had carried the book with him for many years, until the cover grew weathered and beaten down, the pages curled up at the edges from too many adventures through desolate fens and unexpected submergings.

Obi-Wan takes the book from his pack and unwraps it carefully. He turns the pages with tentative fingers, listening to the way the pages rustle like whispers in his ear, so quiet against the wind from outside his windows. He cannot read the language the poems are written in, but there are Qui-Gon’s handwritten notes in the margins, and his translations, inscribed on durasheets and folded among the pages. He is thinking about the lines from his dream, and wonders if those lines are here. So he simply browses through the book, reading the marginalia in Qui-Gon’s odd, old fashioned script. 

Then the pages open by themselves to a place near the end of the book, where a small piece of paper has been wedged inside, and Obi-Wan, with a start, recognizes his own handwriting. 

The scrap of paper bears the signs of having been crumpled up and then smoothed out again, pressed to smoothness by the weight of the text: The poem he had written so long ago and put aside. His master must have found it, kept it, placed it there for safekeeping.

Obi-Wan removes the scrap of paper, fingers tracing the crinkles. 

A chime in his ears, a hint of meaning.

_The door is round and open._

He shakes his head.

He does not think much more after that. He only drifts, half in dream, and half in memory. He is still holding the paper while he falls asleep. 

* * *

He dreams.

A memory, buried underneath years of other half-forgotten memories: His back pressed against his master’s chest, his head falling back on his master’s shoulder, his master’s arms caught around him. He had wanted to close his eyes for a moment, but always Qui-Gon’s hand kept tapping at his cheek, murmuring, _Stay awake, padawan._

His memories were only of Qui-Gon’s voice, rumbling in his ear, repeating those words. And saying other things, anything to keep him awake.

Qui-Gon had turned his head, his hair falling over his shoulder. His beard had scratched against Obi-Wan’s cheek as he spoke.

_“The breezes at dawn have secrets to tell you._

_Don't go back to sleep._

_You must ask for what you truly want-”_

His master’s voice, halting. “You never ask much of me, padawan. I wish that you would. And as for me— Padawan, do not leave me here alone. Do not require that of me.”

Then the voice resumes its lilting recitation. “People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch. The door is round and open. Don't go back to sleep. Stay awake, Obi-Wan. The breeze at dawn...”

* * *

He surfaces for air.

He descends again.

* * *

He had woken up in a bed in the halls of healing with Qui-Gon’s quiet voice resonating through the quiet room.

_“This moment this love comes to rest in me, many beings in one being._

_In one wheat grain a thousand sheaf stacks._

_Inside the needle's eye a turning night of stars._

_Keep walking, though there's no place to get to._

_Don't try to see through the distances._

_That's not for human beings._

_Move within, but don't move the way fear makes you move._

_Walk to the well._

_Turn as the earth and the moon turn, circling what they love._

_Whatever circles comes from the center.”_

Qui-Gon’s voice broke off, and then his cool fingers were brushing against Obi-Wan’s cheek. “Padawan?” His master’s voice, oddly uncertain.

“I always liked that one,” Obi-Wan rasps.

He heard the sound of a book being shut and the whisper of robes as Qui-Gon moved closer to him. “It sounds better in the Gesserit translation. I have no such gift for encapsulating the heart of the original.”

Obi-Wan shook his head and managed to say hoarsely, “You don’t have to put your work down. I prefer your translation.”

“Well, thank you, padawan.”

“Don’t stop,” Obi-Wan managed to say before drifting back off again, and before he went back under again, he heard Qui-Gon’s voice resume.

* * *

He comes to wakefulness before dawn, as though nudged awake. Opens his eyes in the clear gray light rememering the poem in its entirety, as if spoken directly in his ear. 

Obi-Wan rises to his feet with purpose, ignoring the messages blinking on his comm in order to take up a pad of flimsi and hurriedly write down every word he can remember. He can almost hear Qui-Gon’s voice speaking each line, his voice husky and low. 

And then all at once, he is looking at the words on the flimsi. 

_The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you._

_Don't go back to sleep._

_You must ask for what you really want._

_Don't go back to sleep._

_People are going back and forth_

_across the doorsill where the two worlds touch._

_The door is round and open._

_Don't go back to sleep._

When he finishes, he spends a long moment looking at the words he has written on the flimsi. He thinks he may have found an answer, but perhaps it was not the one he had been looking for. 

“What does it mean?” he asks aloud. 

Silence, for a moment, the span of a blink. Then Qui-Gon’s voice. _What it has always meant._

It is like the moment in coming awake, just after he has woken up but just before he opens his eyes.

“I can’t accept that.”

_Padawan._

“You couldn’t possibly.”

Only silence. 

He tucks the flimsi inside the book, next to his poem.

He falls back asleep and dreams of endless rain falling on Coruscant’s gray landscape, the strike of the raindrops on the window of his master’s room, utterly familiar. Qui-Gon sprawling on his couch and reading out loud from his book of poetry, his eyes intent on the page; Obi-Wan curled up beside him, watching the movement of his master’s voice in his throat, spellbound.

_Let my house be drowned in the wave that rose last night_

_Out of the courtyard hidden in the center of my chest._

* * *

When he wakes, his first thought is for the poem. 

He rereads the words slowly. Perhaps he has gotten a word wrong here and there, but yes, this is the poem he remembers Qui-Gon reading aloud that night he had almost died.

He flattens out the slight creases in the flimsi with his thumb. What, he wonders, had Qui-Gon meant by that poem? What did he mean by any of the poems he has translated and sent to him and read aloud over the years?

_You must ask for what you really want._

* * *

Understanding does not come all at once. It slides through him over a slow passage of time, winding through him over the course of long days and weeks. 

He has no more than opened a door, to find that he has arrived. 

* * *

His last night on Austero, when he dreams of Qui-Gon, he waits until courage builds up in his chest, then asks, _Is it you, truly?_

And his master, with limpid eyes and countenance as placid as a tidepool, inquires, _Who else, padawan, do you suppose would it be?_

The rest of the dream is nothingness, only himself, barefoot, with Qui-Gon looking at him as though he stands on some distant shore, a curtain of mist and sea spray between them.

* * *

He has loved his master. This love is such a part of him that he could not imagine himself without it.

Sometimes he thinks he can pinpoint the minute his love for Qui-Gon translated from that steady deep love and became something lighter than air, buoying him up. Qui-Gon, both as constant and changeable as an ocean, at times drawing impossibly close, at other times pulling back, but always there, the single fixture of his life.

The past few years exist in his memory only as a string of arrivals and departures. Just when he seems to get somewhere, he is leaving again.

But he can admit privately that he has been marking time not by missions accomplished nor planets visited nor hours spent in travel from one system to the next. He marks his time from the day he awakens from a dream in which he is a rock and Qui-Gon is the sea, always departing just as it arrives, lapping against him, and realizing that he has been in love with Qui-Gon for much longer than he had ever realized.

* * *

_Don’t go back to sleep._

* * *

He departs Austero in the almost-morning, stepping off the landing pad in the gray light that occurs before the sun has crossed the horizon.

When he arrives on Coruscant, Qui-Gon is waiting for him with his hands tucked inside his sleeves, his face tilted towards the sky.

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> If I let go of who's to blame  
> Of what can’t be changed  
> And will never be the same  
> Close the book, with one last look  
> Letting go of all the time it took 
> 
> It’s hard as stone, but yet it's true  
> Acceptance is the closing cycle  
> The end that marks the point of arrival.
> 
> \- Carrie Newcomer, "The Point of Arrival"


End file.
